Never Could
by qantaqa
Summary: Fiftly-five cycles together and they still never confessed their feelings for each other. Why? I dunno.


Never Could Leave Her  
  
I sat and watched her as she kneeled, spade in hand. The woman I loved, and yet, completely different. Not just physically but her whole persona was... weakened. This was a different Aeryn, one who had given up on Moya because she thought Moya had given up on her. She was betrayed and angry at first, she had told me, but then it stopped mattering.  
  
That's when the Aeryn that I knew on Moya had given into this shell of her former fiery self.  
  
This complacent older Aeryn had married another man. And what really got to me was that she may have *loved* another man. Maybe she never cared for me in the first place. The answer is in the locket.  
  
"Crighton?" She was still beautiful.  
  
"Yeah, babe?"  
  
"Nothing. Just looked like you were spaced out there on me. You alright?"  
  
"You know me. Just a human. But, yea, I'm fine Aeryn. Let's go before it gets dark." The answer is in the locket. And I'm too damn yellow to ask. Next time, next time I get a chance, I'll ask. It's about damned time I got some answers.  
  
------  
  
I turned towards Aeryn, "Ennixx and that sleepin pill she married have arrived."  
  
It may not be nice, but I mean it, though. I fell asleep while he was talking about his trees again. And I don't feel a bit bad 'bout it neither I'm an old man and I'll fall asleep if I damn well please. Or I'll sit down or go for a walk or rant and rave or talk to Harvey in the middle of dinner. I can't help it her husband's about as interesting as the back of my shoe. And Aeryn always sticks up for him too.  
  
She looked away from the sapling she was tending to answer me, "He's not that bad."  
  
"He's boring. Just like everything else around here. Bor-ring."  
  
"Well, I warned you. I tried to make you go back." Yeah, but I couldn't leave you. Never could, still can't.  
  
"I know you did." I look down at the stick I'm holding, not really wanting to get into this same old conversation again. I simply can't forget Moya, the same way I couldn't leave and forget about you, Aeryn.  
  
"John, I gave up being who I was, what I was a hundred cycles ago. Why haven't you?"  
  
"Cause I ain't a gardener. I never wanted to be one. That's all we do around here...garden. Plant things. I was a pilot, Aeryn. Astronaut. I was what I wanted to be. I ain't gonna ferget that, and I can't accept this."  
  
"Do you regret this?"  
That caught me off gaurd. Regret what? This place, this life, that screwed-up Farscape mission? There's a hundred things i could regret, maybe even should. "What?"  
  
"Spending the last 55 cycles here with me?"  
  
Hell, no. I had a feeling that was the 'what.'   
"Aeryn. You are the one thing which has kept me from doing a kamikaze in the transport. I just hafta try to get back to my old life. Just...for a day. That's the hope. Hope. That's what keeps me goin."  
  
"All right. Just don't be too disappointed if...it doesn't happen. If you can't... Ohh!" I quickly reach for Aeryn as she clutches her heart and sink to the ground. She catches herself though. Aeryn, babe, stay with me. Quit scarin' me like that. I'm too damn old for it.  
  
"You okay?"  
  
"Yes. I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine." She holds her hand towards her chest, signaling her heart, "It's just the same old pain. Same pain."  
  
I'm dying out here. We're dying out here together. I sit and think about it everyday. Aeryn and I spending our life here and growing old, for what? Because we wandered into a gigantic space cloud that has a personal problem with Ole Grandfather Time. Fifty-five cycles passed for me so slowly as I've wandered around this God-forsaken paradise, thinking. Lost in my own mind as I sit out here waiting for my death to come, quietly, while I'm sleeping or as a heart attack, like Aeryn seems to be heading. I think I'm gonna die of sheer boredom, though. I look at Aeryn again. She really is the only reason I haven't given Winona one last workout on myself. I never could leave Aeryn.  
  
"Okay. Let's, uh, get you back to the house. You can lie down." I get up, then help Aeryn stand a little sturdier as something falls to the ground. A soft thud on the giving soil. Her locket. The answer to everything. She reaches down for it, but I stop her.   
  
"Uh! Give me that!"   
  
"I got it. I got it."   
  
"Give it to me."  
  
"I got yer locket." I pick it up and watch it swing back in forth in the air. Sorry, Aeryn. Just looking. Deciding. Wond'ring. I've cared for you, Aeryn, since you first stepped aboard Moya. I worried for you and cared for you and got utterly fed up with you. But as much as I cared for Moya, I chose you. Never could leave you. And here it is. The key to whether my life was worth a rat's ass. I finally ask, "Whose, uh, image you got in here, anyway?"  
  
"You know who's in there." I can't accept that. I won't.  
  
"Your husband? He's been dead ninety cycles. Why would you have his image in there?"  
  
"Oh, just to drive you crazy," she replies. No doubt. Cruel, foul woman thou art.  
  
"You know what I think?"  
  
"What?"  
  
"I don't think it's him in there. I think you got my picture." I grin. Frell, it was worth a shot just frustrate her back, if anything.  
  
"Don't flatter yourself."  
  
"Yeah! Yeah, my picture. Surrounded by roses and hearts and yotz."  
  
"Open it, then."  
  
"What?"  
  
She looked at me, and I saw the truth in her eyes. Same eyes I saw fifty-five cycles age, before she left Moya for a couple arns, for good.   
  
"Take a look inside. You'll see his image; the only love of my life." This is it, then, the only love of her life... and it's that boring man she married. It has to be.   
  
She may be bluffing. I look beside me to the shiny leather of my good friend Scorpie.  
  
"But do you really want to know?" he says to me. Harvey, boy! You've got yourself a point there. I couldn't handle it if I saw him there and not me.   
  
"No....no, I don't wanta see his ugly face." I hand her back her locket and throw my arm around her shoulder. I've got her now. Old man or not. I'll enjoy her while she's here with me. Besides, I never could leave her. "Come on. Let's get you back to the house."   
  
"He wasn't ugly, you know."  
  
"Yah, you keep talkin about him, you can walk down by yourself. Hell, you can roll down the hill."  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ 


End file.
